


All I Hear Is Your Song

by ix_tab



Series: Destiny, If There Is Such A Thing (Golden Lovers AU fics) [2]
Category: Professional Wrestling, 新日本プロレス | New Japan Pro-Wrestling
Genre: Canon Divergence, Getting the Band Back Together, Golden Lovers, M/M, but also canon compliant, but the band never broke up, does that tag make sense to you? because it sure as fuck doesn't to me, meta kayfabe compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 23:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16274204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ix_tab/pseuds/ix_tab
Summary: Kota watches Kenny on the monitor, larger then life, even on the tiny screen. Kenny is performing for him, even if no one else but them knows it.





	All I Hear Is Your Song

**Author's Note:**

> HEY! So...this is my take on 'what if they had never actually broken up?'
> 
> Oddly, this is still in kayfabe. There are interviews with Kenny talking about how they weren't allowed to be in the same room, and how they'd been petitioning to do their story. So. A layer of kayfabe removed, but still there. These meta sons of bitches and their determination to tell stories underneath stories. I adore it, I adore them.
> 
> An AU that isn't an AU, from me to you.
> 
> Title from Murder By Death's song "Fuego!"

_It's stupid, this is stupid, I'm risking everything, I'm risking us_ , Kota thinks, and doesn't move his eyes from the monitor where Kenny laughs and taunts Okada in a tag match. Okada looks frustrated and entirely focused, lasered in on Kenny, who is teasing getting into the ring. The Cleaner persona lets him get away with so much because its verging on flirting at this point, and its probably going unnoticed by most.

There are other people around him, and he swears, like he always does, that he’ll play it cool, he will go back to redressing, he won't stare at the beautiful arch of Kenny's back, the play of muscles as he stretches and strikes. That he won't watch Kenny show off and deal with the knowledge that it's for him. Not all of it, of course. But here and there, the playfulness, the showboating, it has nothing to do with anyone but Kota. Some nights they only get to talk through third hand images of each other in the ring. They've both become fluent in this secret language, out of necessity. 

The match is over, the familiar sound of coins dropping meaning Okada has managed to make it rain, yet again. But he doesn't look happy in victory, he's glaring at Kenny, who flashes him a real smile, bright and brilliant before slipping back into his performative sneer.

Okada looks like he's been slapped, a microexpression of wonder, before composing himself into the imperious champion he’s supposed to be.

Kota sympathises, a little. Another part of him wonders if he could get away with kicking Okada really hard sometime soon. He has no idea if Okada is interested in men. He has no idea what Okada is interested in at all, other then fishing, looming over people in the ring, and ice cream. But it doesn't matter. He's not allowed to talk to Kenny, to be in the same room as him, and Okada gets to touch him. A lot.

And that smile? That wasn't for Okada. Kota knows Kenny's face as well as he knows his own, better perhaps. Kenny transfers his love for Kota through the TV, and Okada is just the unwitting filter Kota uses to get it. He wants. He wants so much more then they can safely give one another.

 

***

They have their timing down to an artform. The venues are always different, so unless its one they’ve been to a lot, its too risky to try and find a corridor, a darkened nook. But after the post match festivities, when both of them should be sleeping, there’s a knock on one of their hotel doors and one of them hustles in, hats or hoods as shields.

Tonight, it’s Kenny in his room. Tonight, it’s Kenny stripping off his shirt, bruises forming on his sides and high on exhaustion and adrenaline. He’s jittery, and rambling as Kota turns him, using the familiar guise of checking for injury as an excuse for skin to skin contact.

It burns, just a little, that even in the bubble of privacy they’ve made, he’s trained himself to make excuses. Oh, I wasn’t doing anything, an accident, I just saw him passing by! The little lies they have both told to protect each other, protect their bond over the years. Sometimes it hurts to deny their connection. Other times Kota feels powerful. How weak, how blind must everyone be if they can’t sense the threads that weave and wind around them, binding them together irrevocably?

Right now, he’s tired too, but alive. Wired. His match had been won and done far too quickly, barely enough to scratch the itch. But he’d partied dutifully afterwards. If Kota is honest, and he tries to be, at least with himself, it’s easier to go along, to throw himself head first into celebration, food and drinks and easy, light conversation because he needs a release that he can’t find anywhere else.

The precious minutes he’s carving out of the dark with Kenny aren’t enough, they can’t slake his thirst. Sometimes he thinks about how the distance between them had hurt more and less, Kenny’s snarky tweets in public and pictures of cool dogs he’d seen while out and about sent to him on LINE in private.

Getting to be back, to physically be back it's a sort of relief, but now their time is drip fed to them, stolen and ripped forcibly from others. The office says no. The office always says no. No, the Golden Lovers reunion just won’t fit right now. It doesn’t make sense, aren’t they happier pursuing their own ways now anyway?

 

***

At this point, Kota is pretty sure he’s not signing with them out of spite. Kenny had sighed when Kota had walked out of the last negotiation, stiff and blank faced.

“You’re cutting your nose off to spite your own face, Bu-san,” Kenny had said, quietly, leaning in furtively to kiss him. Kota had pressed the kiss into something a little dirtier, pulled away.

“I’d like to cut something,” Kota had said, viciously. So exhausted of heterosexual platitudes, of being smiled at, pleasant, bland and firmly. Being told that he and Kenny couldn’t be ‘friends’ and also that means, for the fans sake, of course, that they can’t be in a room together. Can’t talk in public, in the back. Can’t fucking look at each other.

“We’ll get them. They can’t stop us. We couldn’t stop ourselves, so how does anyone else think it’s possible?” Kenny had snaked his way around Kota’s body and there was a satisfaction, bright and savage at masking their gasps as they risked it, risked everything to press together in the alleyway Kenny had caught up to him in.

 

***

When the Bucks catch them, Kota feels embarrassed, a child caught sneaking candy after brushing his teeth, as Kenny red faced, teeth marks on his collarbone and chest (it had been more then a week since they last touched. Kota had hungered) explains.

His English is fast and nervous, and peters out when he is pulled in a hard hug by Matt. Kota feels the embarrassment fade, the knot in his chest loosen. Nick sticks out a hand to him, serious and gentle. Kota shakes the hand, tentatively.

“We will help you,” Nick says carefully, and Kota can’t help but laugh a little, nodding. They’d been so afraid, programmed by everyone to expect rejection, polite or otherwise. Not even Kenny, who knew he was loved by his friends had had the courage to broach the subject of their continued relationship. The smokescreen of separation had kept them safe, but it had left them isolated.

He suddenly knows, with utter clarity, looking at the Bucks, already reaching for a teary eyed Kenny that they won’t be denied again. It wasn’t just the two of them, being told that any ‘deviation’ and how Kota hates the double meaning behind that concept, how it could hurt their careers, the company.  
“We’re going to weaponise the Bullet Club, Kenny-tan,” he says, and laughs again as Kenny chokes on his own snort.

 

***

Hands outstretched, tears streaked down their faces, and they hold each other again, hard and fast. The end of a secret, the beginning of something new. Kota would never have to watch Kenny from the corner of his eye, Kenny would never have to send him a message to make sure the coast was clear before they crossed paths after an event.

Freedom tastes sweet, it tastes like salt, sweat and tears. It tastes like victory, and Kota lets the roar of the crowd carry him and Kenny out of the ring, lets it fade away into nothing, lets it all fade away because everyone saw his hands on Kenny, everyone saw Kenny melt into him, weeping.

 

And maybe now, maybe after the years they have both been starved of one another, maybe this year, they can feast.


End file.
